es, the cold waste lands
and the burning deserts, the many coloured men and the wild creatures in
the sea and in the woods, so that you may learn many things, but come
gladly home again. Yes, who knows? Perhaps you also have sailed round
the wide world once in a pea-shell boat.

From Z. Topelius.

'_MOTI_'

ONCE upon a time there was a youth called Moti, who was very big and
strong, but the clumsiest creature you can imagine. So clumsy was he
that he was always putting his great feet into the bowls of sweet milk
or curds which his mother set out on the floor to cool, always smashing,
upsetting, breaking, until at last his father said to him:

'Here, Moti, are fifty silver pieces which are the savings of years;
take them and go and make your living or your fortune if you can.'

Then Moti started off one early spring morning with his thick staff over
his shoulder singing gaily to himself as he walked along.

In one way and another he got along very well until a hot evening when
he came to a certain city where he entered the travellers' 'serai' or
inn to pass the night. Now a serai, you must know, is generally just a
large square enclosed by a high wall with an open colonnade along the
inside all round to accommodate both men and beasts, and with perhaps a
few rooms in towers at the corners for those who are too rich or too
proud to care about sleeping by their own camels and horses. Moti, of
course, was a country lad and had lived with cattle all his life, and he
wasn't rich and he wasn't proud, so he just borrowed a bed from the
innkeeper, set it down beside an old buffalo who reminded him of home,
and in five minutes was fast asleep.

In the middle of the night he woke, feeling that he had been disturbed,
and putting his hand under his pillow found to his horror that his bag
of money had been stolen. He jumped up quietly and began to prowl around
to see whether anyone seemed to be awake, but, though he managed to
arouse a few men and beasts by falling over them, he walked in the
shadow of the archways round the whole serai without coming across a
likely thief. He was just about to give it up when he overhead two men
whispering, and one laughed softly, and, peering behind a pillar, he saw
two Afghan horse-dealers counting out his bag of money! Then Moti went
back to bed!

In the morning Moti followed the two Afghans outside the city to the
horsemarket in which their horses were offered for sale. Ch